Dr. Mahavir Raj Gelra
Philosophy of nature:
One area of relevance would be the philosophy of nature. Concepts of matter, of life and of mind developed in Jainism may suggest fruitful analogies and resemblances with scientific concepts and theories in these fields.
The present discoveries on the massless particles (e.g. Photon, graviton, gluon) are along the lines of the karmic particles as described in Jain literature. Up to Einstein period the popular concept was that the mass is matter and matter is mass, but the discovery of massless matter seems to be revolutionary. The Jains have plenty of literature describing the massless matter and how the massless matter converts itself into mass and vice-versa.
Once the concept of massless matter is fully established by scientists, the theories on life proposed by Jains will become worth comprehending since the soul and the massless karmic matter in Jain philosophy co-exist from the beginning of time. Besides the micro and macro forms of matter there is profound knowledge available on the space-time relationship, movement of massless matter and on the finite universe with infinite space.
